TR EMERITUS

(Photo: Bebeto Matthew, AP) (2 Jul) - They may be part of what makes New York the city that it is, but the New York City Police Department is cracking down on people who dance and perform acrobatics on the subways for money. More than 240 people have been arrested for "pass-the-hat" performances on the subway in 2014 compared to 40 this time last year. While it is not a major crime, it is against the law and can set the tone for further lawlessness, Police Commissioner William Bratton says. .... Some riders enjoy the break from the grime, noise and crowds of the subways. Many performers wait for trains to start before turning up their music and beginning their routines. But not everyone is for it. Some riders say they resent that they are a captive audience and they see the performances as an intrusion. "I don't like all that action right in front of my face," commuter Kesia Hudson said. Outside of the art and legal issues, some are saying there is another element to the debate. At least one organization is arguing that the crackdown targets young black and Hispanic men, who make up a majority of street performers in New York. [Read more:  USA Today]  Read More →

Yesterday, the news of lawyer Alvin Yeo accused of overcharging went public ('MP & lawyer Alvin Yeo accused of overcharging'). He was one of the lawyers representing the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) in the court case against Dr Susan Lim. When Dr Lim lost her case, she was ordered to pay the SMC’s costs, including the legal fees of Alvin Yeo's law firm, WongPartnership LLP. While scrutinizing the legal bills of WongPartnership, Dr Lim and her husband alleged that WongPartnership was overcharging. In fact, in one of the bills, it was alleged that the fees of Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho amounted to $100,000 per hour of court hearing. Later, Dr Lim filed notices of dispute for all the bills from WongPartnership, which amounted to some $1 million, before a taxation hearing. The assistant registrar at the hearing disagreed with the $1 million bill and slashed WongPartnership’s total bill charges to $340,000 instead. Unhappy with the decision made at the taxation hearing, Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho then applied to the High Court to review the assistant registrar’s decision. The High Court Judge, Justice Woo Bih Li, eventually raised the charges allowed from $340,000 to $370,000, which was still far below the original $1 million. With the judgment from High Court, Dr Lim’s husband later complained to the Law Society against Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho for overcharging. What happened next was that the review committee of Law Society actually dismissed the complaint against Alvin Yeo, as lacking in substance. It based its decision on WongPartnership’s assertion that Alvin Yeo was not involved in the preparation of the bills, and that there was therefore no misconduct on his part. Dr Lim’s husband is now applying for a judicial review before the High Court, of the decision made by Law Society’s review committee. He is asking the court to quash the review committee’s decision and appoint a new committee to review the complaint against Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho again. ST reported the same news today ('Surgeon Susan Lim's husband launches new court action', 3 Jul). However, it avoided mentioning that lawyer Alvin Yeo is actually the same PAP MP of Chua Chu Kang GRC. ST only mentioned his name once in its article: "Mr Deepak Sharma, a 60-year-old retired banker who is funding his wife's case, has asked the High Court to conduct a judicial review of a Law Society committee's decision to dismiss most of his complaints that Senior Counsel Alvin Yeo and Ms Melanie Ho had overcharged his wife, who was ordered to pay the SMC's legal costs." In fact, the Parliament website shows that Alvin Yeo is the Managing Partner of WongPartnership [Link]: In other words, he is one of the bosses of WongPartnership. Lawyers were disciplined in the past for overcharging A lawyer who overcharges his client can face disciplinary action. In Nov 2012, two lawyers were suspended for three months for overcharging their client. The penalty was handed by 3 Judges of Appeal. They backed the findings of a disciplinary tribunal against the 2 errant lawyers, Ang and Decruz [Link]. In the Ang and Decruz's case, it was the Law Society which brought the charges against them. They had grossly inflated the bills to about $566,000 when a taxation hearing showed that the amount should have been $170,000. The judge who delivered the judgement against Ang and Decruz, pointed out that the level of overcharging amounted to "grossly improper conduct". He said the lawyers have "an overriding duty to charge fairly" and stressed that the final bill "must not be grossly disproportionate to the time spent" on the matter. He added their conduct is "redolent of dishonesty and deceit, and threatens to bring the legal profession into disrepute". "Such conduct must be regarded as grossly improper," he said. The judge noted that the total fees charged are three to four times more than the total amount eventually awarded after the taxation hearing. In absolute figures, the total difference was around $400,000. "Such a huge difference in the figures can only be regarded as egregious and can hardly be justified," the judge said. Alvin Yeo spoke only once in Parliament last year A search on the Parliament website [Link] showed that Alvin Yeo only spoke once in Parliament last year: In contrast, new MP Lee Li Lian from WP spoke at least 30 times last year:  Read More →

PROFESSOR PHILIP HOLDEN, DEPARTMENT of ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, NUS In his article in the Today paper on 3 Jul 14, ‘Spore universities’ foreign talent policies need to change’, Professor Philip Holden, revisited the issue of disappearing Singaporean faculty members in the local universities raised by Seah Kian Peng earlier in Parliament. His observation, ‘While more than half of current tenured faculty in the university system are Singaporean, Singaporeans now constitute only a quarter of early career academics on the tenure track at NUS and NTU.’ Is this planned and the desired goal? What is Philip Holden trying to say? There are too few Singaporeans in the university faculties and going to get bad in the future? To him this is a problem. To Singapore, is it a problem? Maybe lah. Maybe just enough to ‘talk talk’ and nothing more to it. It was discussed in Parliament, yes, but everything is forgotten. To Holden, this is not a little problem that is good enough for after dinner talk but serious enough to demand action. He said, ‘My experience as a visiting scholar in Canada over the past years suggests that discussions may not be enough and should be supplemented by concrete policy changes.’ Funny that a foreigner could see problems in our foreign talent policies and a problem serious enough to require actions while our chaps didn’t see anything wrong and a few talking cock sessions will do, nothing needs to be done? In a survey done, it ‘found that more than 80 per cent of Singaporean graduate students, whether abroad or in the Republic, answered “yes” or “maybe” when asked if they felt local universities prefer to hire non Singaporeans.’ Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Dunno leh, probably not important. The whole faculty can go to foreigner should be no issue too what? After all this is getting to become a non country or a non nation. Anything wrong with foreigners teaching us about our history, culture and literature? There were rumours and murmurs that the selection committees of our local universities were dominated by foreigners who have the final say in who to hire. I can’t believe that this is the case. Next time our political appointees could also be decided by a panel of foreigners and no one will bat an eyelid. What’s wrong with it? Anyone who says foreigners taking over the recruitment of faculty members is unacceptable and must be xenophobic. And anyone saying bad things about the industries being dominated by foreigners and foreigners hiring their own kinds are also xenophobic and deserves to be whacked. We are a free economy and we welcome talents from the whole world. This island belongs to everyone here. What the ….?   Chua Chin Leng aka redbean * The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenew.blogspot.com/    Read More →